


Evening Dress

by constantlearner



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers, Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 13:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2026446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constantlearner/pseuds/constantlearner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>London: September  1937   Aunt Helen asks Nancy to do something for her. Nancy isn’t always as confident as she seems. Susan, Dorothea and Dick are prepared to back her up. Swallows and Amazons Cross- over with Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh. (Lord Peter Wimsey). A little bit of frivolity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evening Dress

**Author's Note:**

> The Blacketts, the Walkers and the Callums belong to the late Arthur Ransome.  
> Claude Amery is the invention of either the late Dorothy L. Sayers or Jill Paton Walsh and it is a measure of how very good indeed Thrones, Dominations is that I cannot tell the difference.  
> Claude Amery was advised by Harriet Vane to have a second play ready in case the first one was a success. However ungracious his manner was, he evident took her advice so well that the second play was put on in late September 1937 after the first was put on in early August 1937.

“Of course,” said Nancy, “What is it?” It was rare for Helen Blackett to ask for anyone’s help and Nancy felt almost relieved at the chance to do something for her aunt.

“Come and see the first night of the play. Bring some friends.” her Aunt Helen said.

“I’ll bring Susan, if she’s not on duty.”

“Susan is one of the Walker _s_ , isn’t she? What about that brother of hers? Or the others?”

“John is at sea. The others are all still at school, in Portsmouth. If you want me to bring someone else, I could ask Dot and Dick Callum too, if they haven’t gone to university by then. Dot likes intellectual sort of stuff.  You’ve met them. When is the first night?”

“A fortnight’s time. Term won’t have started for them. Oxford and Cambridge always do start later.” Aunt Helen looked around to make sure Lillian was out of hearing. “I’ll treat you to the tickets.”

“No need, you do a lot for me already. It’s still the beginning of term, practically. I can afford four tickets for the gallery, even if the others will let me treat them.”

Nancy did not want to say that, with the possible exception of Dorothea, they would probably not enjoy the play, so she felt obliged to pay for their tickets. She suspected the Claude Amery play was not exactly Aunt Helen’s cup of tea either. Not that Aunt Helen would ever admit as much. She didn’t blame her aunt for that. Lillian had designed both sets and costumes.

“Except that I’d like you in the stalls.” said Helen.

That meant two things, Nancy realised. Firstly, Aunt Helen was really concerned about this. Secondly, it meant getting dressed up, really dressed up with a proper evening frock. She had mastered looking respectable, neat and business-like in a way that would have astonished her only a few years ago. She remembered her gloves and wore a hat when in the vicinity of college. (Well nearly always.) But her aunt needed her to turn up and look as if she was the sort of person who often went to the theatre and could afford a seat in the stalls. It didn’t matter one bit that she wasn’t pretty, but it would be better if she didn’t actually _look_ like someone’s dowdy provincial niece invited to boost first night numbers.

She squared her shoulders. Her aunt wanted her help to help Lillian. She would do it. A pity her best frock looked a bit more Sunday- go-to church than sophisticated evening dress, but it would have to do.

Helen Blackett watched her niece’s face. Nancy’s feelings were reflected on her face just as they were on Molly’s. _Why is my niece the only twenty-year old girl in London to regard dressing up for an evening at the theatre as some kind of disagreeable chore? Who taught her to see nice clothes as a punishment? Well I know who, but I do wonder why Molly let it happen._

Helen saw Nancy square her shoulders. She wanted to rush to the other side of the table and hug Nancy; she looked for a minute so like the little girl she had been, putting on a brave face “so Peggy knows there’s nothing to be scared of.” She hadn’t hugged either of her nieces in ten years. This probably wasn’t the best time to start again.

Instead she suggested, “Would you like to borrow something of mine? We could always put a couple of darts in at the waist and turn the hem up an inch if you need it.”

“Are you sure?” said Nancy, “I mean won’t you want to wear it yourself?”

“Since my work has become more fashionable, or rather fashion coincides more with my work, I occasionally do have a need for an evening frock or two or three. Just because you usually see me in slacks and a smock doesn’t mean I always wear them. Come upstairs and have a look.”

Helen laid three dresses out on the bed although thought she knew which Nancy would prefer anyway. Sure enough, Nancy picked up the plain, black bias-cut dress first, turned it over, noticed it was backless and put it back in the wardrobe. Well, thought Helen, it was _very_ backless. There was a pale rose pink dress with one long sleeve and a bare shoulder. It fell straight and tight until mid-thigh and then broke out into a cascade of ruffles. That went back with barely a glance. The remaining dress was a deep sea-green. The rayon material fell in very fine pleats and it had a V neckline and cape sleeves. Helen thought of it as her “non-committal” evening dress.

“Why don’t you try it on?” Helen suggested, “We’ll see if you need anything else to go with it?” And she went downstairs to clear the Sunday lunch dishes from the table.

“The length is fine on you.” she said when Nancy presented herself for inspection. “And I have a bag to go with it that Lillian made. I don’t even think we need to take it in – those pleats let it fall quite nicely as it is and the waist has a tie at the back. What about shoes? Mine will be too big.”

“We have to have shoes for country dancing and so forth for college. They’ll do.”

“And what about a coat?”

“Mine’s blue and the dress is a blue-green. They should look alright together.”

“Nancy, your coat looks like school uniform.”

“It _was_ school uniform. I hadn’t grown out of it to it didn’t make sense to change it. I just unpicked the badge.”  

“Come upstairs again. I’ll try to remember what I used to wear with the dress. There’s a little string of seed pearls that used to be my mother’s that you could wear with it if you liked”

* * *

 

“Nancy, you don’t have to apologise for inviting me to the theatre, nor even for asking me to dress up.” said Susan, over high tea in a corner-house the next Saturday. “Sometimes I’m just grateful to be sitting down. Anyway, I’ve dragged you along to whodunits with me a few times.”

“They had proper stories. I’m afraid this one won’t – just people being miserable in verse.”

“I don’t think it will be that bad. They wouldn’t have put on two plays by the same person so quickly one after another if it was going to be that awful.”

* * *

 

“You’ll get more wear out of it than Dorothea will out of one of her dresses.  It is _not_ an extravagance, Dick.” said his mother. “So you will go properly dressed to this play. The Blacketts have been very good indeed to both you and Dorothea. You should be glad to go properly dressed to this play if it helps Miss Blackett’s friend. What is it she’s done again?”

“Set and costume design.”

“Well mind you notice something good about it and say so. Where’s Dorothea?”

“She’s rummaging around in your wardrobe for something to go with her dress.” Dick said and made his escape. Maybe there was something to be said for wearing new clothes with Susan who wouldn’t make a comment and Nancy who would be a comrade in affliction before he had to wear them among strangers at Cambridge.

* * *

 

 

_Dear Nancy,_

_I know we agreed to ignore birthdays, but as you pointed out in July, twenty first birthdays are different. You broke the rule first. I hope you like this. Anyway, pirates should have jewellery from exotic places and foreign seas even if the straits of Gibraltar aren’t the Caribbean and silver isn’t gold. When I discovered the stone was called Amazonite, I thought I really had to give you this. Apparently, it doesn’t come from the Amazon.  I didn’t have enough language in common with the shopkeeper to establish where it did come from!_

_Things looked as if they were going to get rather lively a short while back, then they looked briefly as if things were going to get very lively indeed. Since then things appear to have got a lot quieter (at least for us) but we remain very busy. I still only know a very little bit of Spanish, but it’s amazing how much both sides can convey with mime, providing no-one minds making a fool of themselves. To be honest, we all need the light relief sometimes. The worst bit has been seeing children so young so afraid. The best bit is seeing how quickly they realise that this ship full of men speaking a strange language means them no harm. A sweet is a sweet in any language! It looks as though we at least will be back doing escort duties fairly soon._

_I hope your final year at college begins well. I’m glad to hear your landlady regards Susan as a respectable visitor! Much as Susan loves her training, I think she finds living surrounded by other student nurses a bit wearing – I know how much she enjoys spend time with you occasionally._

_Happy Birthday,_

_With best wishes,_

_John_

The accompanying tin had once contained throat lozenges. When Nancy opened it, she found a small silver pendant and with a slightly translucent bluish-green stone. John had folded and sewn a piece of cloth which might once have been a handkerchief to make a little cushion for it and had loosely tacked the delicate silver chain to the cushion to keep it in place. It was this care, rather than the gift itself, which filled her eyes with tears. Amazon pirates did not cry. The thing to do was write back and thank John immediately.

At the end of the letter she encountered the usual dilemma. Letters to Titty, Dot or Susan finished “with love”. She didn’t quite feel comfortable putting that on a letter to John. Nancy grinned wryly at own dishonesty. She didn’t quite feel comfortable putting that on a letter to John _first._ A few times she had started to write it, only to change her mind and change the “l” to a “b” at the last minute. Sometimes the “wishes” had become rather cramped as a result. A thought struck her. She looked back at John’s letter. Had the “b” started out as an “l”? John started both letters with the same type of loop, so it was hard to tell. It was just possible to imagine that the “e” had started out as an “o”. The “s” had never been anything else. Not enough evidence to form a firm conclusion, but enough to suggest a hypothesis as Dick would say.

Nancy addressed the envelope. She turned back to the letter and quickly wrote “With love, Nancy”, making it look as hurried as possible. She went out to post the letter before she changed her mind.

* * *

 

“Aunt Helen?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind if I didn’t wear that necklace after all?”

“Of course, I wouldn’t mind. May I ask why?”

“I’ve been given a pendent for my birthday and….. I’d rather wear that.”

“If it’s from your great aunt you certainly better had wear it – no matter how hideous it is. She does seem to have the most uncanny way of finding out about things.” Helen hoped that news of what she was wearing to the first night would not somehow make its way back to Harrogate. Maria Turner had the most unfortunate way of making poisonous little remarks about someone you cared about and demanding your agreement. If you defended them in any way, or even just disagreed, you were accused of rudeness. A noncommittal answer or a studied silence just brought further needling. Molly’s own good nature made her such an easy target for this sort of thing.

“Oh, it’s not from her – and it’s not in the least bit hideous either.” said Nancy, rather hastily. Aunt Helen was most unlikely to be stuffy about the “not accepting presents from young men” rule, but Nancy felt that explanations were always best avoided.

It was Dick had to admit, interesting. Dorothea was thrilled to find herself sitting only three rows behind Harriet Vane. Dick and Nancy watched with affectionate amusement as Dot whispered in discrete excitement to Susan. Face absolutely serene, Susan found it necessary to stand up and smooth the long skirt of her pink frock in a sketchy gesture before sitting down again. Susan was quite a bit shorter than Dot and was sitting behind someone taller.

Two women were approaching them, one in a pretty mauve evening frock and the other in a man’s evening dress, tie, trousers everything. When he looked more closely (and he really found he could not help it) Dick realised that however much they might resemble a man’s clothes they had undoubtedly been tailored for the woman wearing them. She looked far more at ease in them than he did in his new clothes. He was not in the least bit surprised when Nancy greeted the woman as “Aunt Helen” and introduced them all. Miss Anderson, the lady in the mauve dress, then introduced them to the playwright, a thin, nervous looking man. Dick supposed he had every right to feel nervous.

The play turned out not to be in verse but was just as gloomy as Nancy had lead them to expect. It did however have more of a plot than Dick had anticipated. He found that he was not the only person to felt like this. A little old lady had been sitting between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. As they waited with Miss Blackett and her friend, while the auditorium gradually emptied at the end of the performance, Dick heard her say to the playwright,

“Of Mr Amery, quite a delightful evening or perhaps I shouldn’t say delightful when there was so much _anguish_ and _sadness,_ but it really wasunhappy in such an _uplifting_ way that I could feel it doing me good and I shall think of it often when I feel myself becoming inappropriately frivolous. I’m sure it will continue to be a marvellous success and such _interesting_ costumes and such an unusual set. You know I find rooms and spaces always tell you something about the people who use them even if the relationship is not entirely a happy one.”

“Would you like to meet the designer, your grace?” asked Mr Amery who seemed a little dazed by the Duchess’s conversational style.

The dowager Duchess of Denver was ushered over to their little group. To Dorothea and Susan’s carefully concealed regret, Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey stayed where they were, talking to another couple. Introductions were made, although Mr Amery unsurprisingly got their names mixed up and had to turn to Miss Blackett to help him out. She had just got to “my niece, Nancy Blackett” with her hand on Nancy’s shoulder when a photographic flash went off.

“I do so dislike it when they do that,” said the Dowager Duchess, “but I hope the publicity does you good Miss Anderson and you too Mr Amery and my daughter-in-law tells me that publicity is so important so I certainly shan’t be complaining.”

* * *

 

 “Bob and Phoebe are still here. Come into the drawing room and tell us about the play. We’ve rather fallen back into talking shop I’m afraid.”

Dick and Dot liked the Bancrofts, who were both archaeologists and settled down with no reluctance to give an account of the evening. Mrs Bancroft laughed when she heard that for Dorothea, the highlight of the evening had been seeing Harriet Vane. Dorothea looked a little hurt.

“Oh I’m not laughing at you, Dorothea, so much as at myself. When you’ve sat in the same room as someone, and quite often next to them as well, for three meals a day for three years, it’s something of a shock when perfectly intelligent young woman is impressed simply by meeting that person. She was in my year at Shrewsbury College. Perhaps in twenty years’ time the friends you make at Oxford will be laughing at people who are impressed by meeting you. It does you credit that you care more that you’ve seen Harriet Vane than that you’ve seen Lady Peter Wimsey.”

* * *

 

_Dear John,_

_I’m a prefect! It’s not very exciting at the moment, just some duties, but we will probably be doing a sixth- form play for the staff and the rest of the school (and parents of course) and I will be helping to arrange that._

_Roger seems to be quite enjoying sixth-form work after dithering around a great deal about which subjects to take. He still doesn’t know what he wants to do yet afterwards – but then neither do I. I’m hoping an idea will strike me before the end of the year. It would be even more helpful if an idea would strike me before the end of next week. The headmistress is summoning each of us (I mean the Upper Sixth) individually for “informal little chats” about our futures. Fortunately she’s seeing us alphabetically and only seeing two or three a day, so I’ve got time to think up some kind of answer!_

_Now we are the Upper Sixth we have our own common room. You won’t guess what yesterday’s excitement was (unless you’ve turned to the cutting I’ve enclosed first). Someone brought this to school with her. She recognised Susan of course. So here, if Susan hasn’t already told you, is the reason why there is a photograph of Susan and a Duchess in a picture magazine, or illustrated newspaper or whatever you want to call it._

…………………… He looked at the picture. It was captioned “Mr Claude Amery (playwright) and Miss Lillian Anderson (designer) receiving congratulations from the Dowager Duchess of Denver on the success of (Titty or her classmate had cut the name of the play off.) He was less interested in the people in the foreground of the picture than in those standing slightly further back. Susan was shown clearly in a dress he knew was pink. John could see Dick standing behind her. Was that tall young woman with a mass of hair piled up on top of her head Dorothea? Apparently so. It was difficult to think of Dot as grown up, but she was after all a year older than Titty. Nancy was standing next to Susan in a long dark dress, right arm just moving forward to shake hands with the dowager duchess. John smiled. Although it was small, the little pendent showed up quite well. Still smiling, he folded the letter and picture up carefully with the other letters as put it in a pocket. There were other things he should be doing before he settled down to read Titty’s letter properly.

_Nancy and Peggy’s aunt, the one Nancy says is as good as a pirate, lives in London and does book illustrations. She has a friend who designs sets and costumes for plays as well as painting. The friend had done the designs for a really highbrow play and the aunt wanted to have as many people there for the first night as possible to help the play be a success so she treated Nancy and the D’s and Susan to tickets. Susan says the play was better than she expected. Anyway, I thought you might like the picture._

_Lots of Love,_

John looked at the picture again. Nancy looked beautiful. She always did look beautiful but she had never seen her dressed up like this. He studied the picture again. Was that someone’s hand on her shoulder? It looked like the sleeve of a black jacket. Not a frill to be seen on the sleeve. He was being silly – he couldn’t possibly infer anything from a tiny corner of a not-very-big photograph. What right had he to feel jealous? She was his best friend, yes, but not his girlfriend. She had every right to have a boyfriend if it pleased her.

The realisation of his own stupidity crashed down on him. Any boyfriend would become Nancy’s best friend. His own caution might (just might) already have ruined everything. He should have said something to her years ago. The worst that could happen was that she didn’t feel the same way and said so. They would feel awkward of course, but their friendship had survived awkwardness once before. And if there was someone else she cared about – well it would be better in that case if there _was_ a feeling of distance between them. Geographical distance between them would be no problem – they had plenty of that. He _really_ didn’t want to think about a “someone else.”

John reached in his pocket for the other letters still unread. One from Bridget in the same envelope as Titty’s letter, one from his mother. One from his father – a different (and badly smudged) postmark. A rather small envelope from with familiar writing was sandwiched between his father’s letter and one with a Cambridge postmark.  His family and Dick could wait. He opened the letter from Nancy first.

_Dear John,_

_Thank you very, very much for the pendent. It is lovely. It will have its first outing tomorrow, because Aunt Helen wants me to go to a first night. A friend of hers has designed the costumes and the set for a play, which sounds as if it is going to be horribly highbrow and lacking in story. Susan has most nobly agreed to come with me and so have Dorothea and Dick. With Aunt Helen and her friend, that’s six of us. I think Aunt Helen wants as many people to go as possible! She has lent me an evening dress – a dark bluish-green, so your present looks just right with it. I wish you were coming too – not because I wish a boring play on you, but because it is such a long time since I’ve seen you and letters are not the same. It takes so much longer to get the same amount said for one thing!_

_I keep trying to read between the lines in the newspapers to find out how things are probably going for you._

_Susan seems a happier now that she’s on a new ward. I think it is because more of the patients recover._

_With love, Nancy_

John smiled. The world seemed a great deal brighter than it had ten minutes ago.


End file.
